Los Angeles County Industry

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has responsibility to control air pollution. It can seek court-imposed fines against polluters of $25 to $25,000 a day based on such factors as the extent that emissions exceed legal limits, potential danger to the public, whether the violation was intentional, accidental or caused by negligence and the company's history of violations.

In an industrial park near the ARCO refinery in Carson, workers are renovating a warehouse that, vacant for almost three years, will soon house one of the nation's largest and fastest-growing vitamin makers. In El Segundo, the heart of the South Bay's aerospace industry, a 475,000-square-foot office building has been vacant since defense giant Hughes Aircraft Co. left six months ago. Such is the muddled picture of office and industrial real estate in the South Bay.

When Jerry Chodera decided to upgrade one of his company's pollution-control devices, he was resigned to waiting months for the necessary permits. But thanks to the intervention of the newly formed Merit Partnership for Pollution Control, Chodera received the three permits he needed in a matter of weeks. "In all honesty, I was amazed," said Chodera, vice president of Wescal Industries in Rancho Dominguez, which manufactures parts for electric lights industry.

There is no shortage of officials who work to safeguard the health and safety of people outside the factories of Los Angeles County. Latinos and other workers exposed inside those factories, however, are not nearly so well protected from toxic substances.

At the peak of public fury over the Metro Green Line last month, county officials sought to defuse the situation by proposing to set up a government-owned factory at which a contractor could build a new kind of car that could be used by transit agencies across the country.

An explosives manufacturer received permission Thursday to open a plant on the site of a defunct defense plant in Santa Clarita Valley. The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission tentatively approved a request by Special Devices Inc. to operate an explosives plant for the next 10 years on a 203-acre site in Sand Canyon east of the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Although building rail cars and buses may offer some long-term hope for Los Angeles County's beleaguered manufacturing sector, some experts say such transit work promises little quick relief to the area's thousands of unemployed aerospace and auto workers. The money is there, as Southern California expects to spend about $140 billion on transit improvements over the coming 30 years.

Southern California, goes the big lie, is a palmy oasis of leisurely business lunches, a laid-back haven where the background music is waves tumbling on the beach. Work--if you have to do any--probably takes place in a sleek office building or on glamorous movie set. In fact, the truth is more gritty than glittery: Southern California remains one of the leading manufacturing centers in the world.